Originally printed in IndyStar: \u201cThey were young. They thought they had time. Then they nearly died of liver disease.\u201d By Shari Rudavsky, February 18, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n
Although Rachel Martin would never deny she had a drinking problem, she figured years would pass before it would take a toll on her health. After all, she had not yet hit 40 and she had managed to eke out two years of complete sobriety about a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Even when she was drinking, she would hit the bottle hard for three weeks but then go cold turkey for a week.<\/p>\n
So when Martin started feeling off about a year and a half ago, she tried to ignore the symptoms. She lost her appetite, her skin itched, and as she put it, she lost her waist as fluid accumulated in her abdomen. For four months\u00a0she continued to drink, but in mid-March 2019, she decided she was done.<\/p>\n
The next day she finally went to the doctor and found out she had cirrhosis of the liver, something that did not surprise her, given her internet-aided self-diagnosis.<\/p>\n
What did surprise her, however, was what her doctor said: If she did not stop drinking she might die within a month. Even if she did quit, she might not make it three months.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know it\u2019s bad for you, you know it\u2019s not healthy at all whatsoever, but you think, ‘Oh, I have no family history of this,’ \u201d said the Bloomington resident, who is now 39. \u201cI know people that drink more than I do, and they\u2019re fine. I have years before I have to worry about this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctors are seeing more patients like Martin, people in their 20s and 30s with symptoms of acute liver disease related to alcohol consumption. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism published\u00a0a study in January<\/a>\u00a0that found that from 1999 to 2017 the number of alcohol-related deaths per year doubled, rising from 35,914 to 72,558. Just under a third of those resulted from liver disease.<\/p>\n
Similarly, a\u00a0study in the British Medical Journal\u00a0<\/a>published in 2018 also noted a dramatic increase in deaths in the United States from cirrhosis from 1999 to 2016. In that time period, people ages 25 to 34 saw the highest increase.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is an epidemic of alcoholism and alcohol use disorder that I think is hiding behind the opioid crisis,\u201d said Dr. Naga Chalasani, head of hepatology at\u00a0Indiana University\u00a0Health<\/a>. \u201cAlcohol consumption has risen in this country. …\u00a0Everything is sort of going in the wrong direction. There are more people drinking, and the people who drink are drinking more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trend is particularly pronounced in middle-aged women, where studies suggest that high-risk drinking is the highest it has ever been, Chalasani said.\u00a0A 2019 study\u00a0<\/a>by University of Michigan researchers that looked at more than 100 million Americans with private insurance found a 50% increase in the prevalence of alcohol-related cirrhosis in women from 2009 to 2015.<\/p>\n
The people getting sick are not necessarily the people you might expect.<\/p>\n
How much alcohol is too much<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cThey are people who consume alcohol on\u00a0a\u00a0moderate basis chronically enough to be harmful to them, and they didn\u2019t really expect it to be that harmful,”\u00a0said Dr. Mazen Alsatie, a gastroenterologist and hepatologist with\u00a0Ascension St. Vincent<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Conventional wisdom used to hold that moderate drinking \u2014 a glass or two a day for women and up to three drinks for men \u2014 might actually benefit health. Studies also have\u00a0touted the health benefits of wine. But experts have started to dial back such endorsements of alcohol, especially after\u00a0a controversial 2018 study\u00a0<\/a>in The Lancet even suggested that no amount alcohol is safe.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u00a0<\/a>recommends that alcohol be consumed in moderation, which according to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines consists of no more than one drink a day for women and two for men.<\/p>\n
Some can drink, some can’t<\/strong><\/p>\n
For those with a genetic predisposition, that seemingly innocuous level of alcohol can lead to serious health problems. About a third of people who drink heavily go on to develop alcoholic hepatitis, a condition in which the cells of the liver become inflamed, according to the\u00a0American Liver Foundation<\/a>. Between 10% and\u00a020% of heavy drinkers develop cirrhosis, in which scar tissue in a damaged liver replaces healthy tissue.<\/p>\n
Only hope a liver transplant<\/strong><\/p>\n
Her only hope was a transplant.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Originally printed in IndyStar: \u201cThey were young. They thought they had time. Then they nearly died of liver disease.\u201d By Shari Rudavsky, February 18, 2020. Although Rachel Martin would never deny she had a drinking problem, she figured years would … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3399,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions\/3399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}